I wrote a poem for Creative Writing, and it was kind of dribble but I also liked it... and I had to read it for the class, and I hadn't read anything of my own in front of people in a long time...And I've gotten so good at not being shy of things like that, of speaking up and expressing myself and speaking in front of others, but sometimes I revert back to how I was before the change.
A shyness that's painful and paralyzing, a nervousness that makes my whole body tremble, an agony of self-conciousness that tightens my chest and throat and causes dark spots into bloom in my eyes and once made me so sick and scared that I not until I literally woke up a few minutes later did I realize what had happened...
And I didn't revert all the way back, of course, but my hands were shaking, and I read the poem and oh god I just wanted them to like it and I sat in the silence afterward with a heart so loud only I could hear it.
This is the poem:
Did ever I not love you?
Was I--when born from my cocoon,
still damp with just-life,
yet without wings--
deaf and dumb to the song of it?
Was I--when young and small,
still merely a peanut,
or the button of a coat--
in the shadow of that looming mountain
and yet blind to it?
Was I--when not quite a woman,
still the unripened pear
amidst the sea of sweetened peaches--
suffocating with the heaviness,
not knowing yet to breathe it?
Was I--when grown all that one can up,
left only to grow all one can old,
a cornstalk in late August--
surrounded on all sides, all places
by a loud and savage attack,
but still unaware of it?
I ask because I have no answers.
It is a riddle in the newspaper
one leaves in the sun
until faded and forgotten.
I am afraid the memory of my life before you
has melted--
and like liquid
slipped between my fingers.
that's a beautiful poem.
Posted by: kim at January 29, 2005 04:37 PM